As a transplanted Czech I want put my two koruna in here.Karel Čapek, a Czech writer coined the term "robot"And shire lad.... you should follow through what is outlined by these nice people.Or you can stand in front of a mirror and Say,Karel Čapek... Karel Čapek... Karel ČapekWhere upon Čapek will appear.......and turn you into a pic of a early robot in his book :-)

Yea... Iv never been too good at analog, but a buddy of mine is super hoton the subject he explained a lot of his designs how and why they worked.I built stuff and learned a lot of what not to do, plus there is always W. Jung... LoL.

Yep. The IC Op-Amp Cookbook is a wonderful tool. (And if you take time to read the introduction, he actually does give you a compressed version of what the design abstractions are that make op-amps so useful.... which further reinforces his description of exactly how each circuit works, and improves your ability to tweak them for your own needs.)

Build and program some simple robot designs other people have some up with. Experiment with altering them, or recombining pieces of them. Move to more complicated designs. Then try designing your own based on what you've learned.

You'll need to learn how to program, ideally at an assembler or near-assembler level though a lot can be done in higher-level languages. You'll need to know how to access I/O ports to send commands to the robot's "muscles" and read back the results, and (if appropriate) to have it communicate with other machines. You'll need to learn enough simple electronics to build, debug, and alter (and eventually design) the robot's brain and nervous system. You'll need to learn enough simple mechanical design to build, debug, and alter (and eventually design) the robot's body.

If professionally: Take the previous paragraph and scale it up to years of focused study. And then hope you can land a job doing robotics rather than something else.